THE ANOTHOMIA OF HIERONYMO MANFREDI 127 Galen's description differed altogether from that of Aristotie.He tells us expressly and somewhat contemptuously that ' it isno marvel if Aristotle erred in many anatomical matters, a manwho thought forsooth that the heart in the larger animals had threechambers '.^ Galen always describes the heart as having but twochambers, the right and left ventricles, a whoUy subordinate partbemg assigned to the auricles. These latter were regarded as safety-valves, expanding to hold superfluous blood when the chambers ofthe heart to which they correspond become overfiUed. No third ventricle is described by Rhazes or Haly Abbas,^but Avicenna, in his Canon, makes an effort to combine theviews of Aristotle and Galen. Speakingof the anatomy of the heart (lib. iii,fen. xi, chap. 1) he describes the ventri- ti^T^jMil^ f8*t^\f.cular portion as foUows : ' In the heartare three cavities, two large, and a thirdas it were central in position. So thatthe heart has [a] a receptacle [the rightventricle] for the nutriment vsdth whichit nourishes itself—this nutriment isthick and firm like the substance of the ^le- 21. the heartheart; [6] a place where the pneuma is ^'""^ ^'''a^er SudS' ^^'''' ^^^formed [the left ventricle], being engen¬dered of the subtil blood; and [c], thirdly, a canal between the two.' *A somewhat simUar account is given in Constantine's translationof Isaac* The idea soon crept into European medicine, for in aPisan MS. dating from the first half of the thirteenth century ®a crude figure of a three-chambered heart is to be found (Fig. 21). ¦* Galen, Tlepl avarofUKSiv lyxiiprjcreuiv. Book 7 (157); KCU 6avp.a(rTov ovSiv, aAAa t€¦jToAAa Kara Tas ai/aro/ias 'ApKTTOTekrj Sia/AapTetf, Kat rjyita-Bai Tpw Ix"'' '^o'A.tas eiri tSvfjLeyaXiDV ^wo)v t^v Kaphiav, Kiihn, ii. 62. 2 Haly Abbas expressly denies its existence, chap. 21. 3 P. Koning, Trois traites d'anatomie arabes, Leyden, 1903, 687, rendersthe passage as follows : ' Dans Ie cceur il y a trois cavites, deux grandes et uneautre qui se trouve pour ainsi dire au miUeu, afin que le coeur ait un depot pourla nourriture avec laqueUe U se nourrit, nourriture epaisse et forte, semblablea la substance du cceur, ensuite un endroit oii se forme un pneuma qui y estengendre d'un sang subtil et enfin un canal entre ces deux.' * Pantechni. Theorice, lib. iii, cap. 22. Here, however, only two concauitatesare deseribed and between them a foramen : quod a quibusdam vocatur tertia con-cauitas: sed non est ita. * The MS. Roncioni 99, reproduced by K. Sudhoff m Archiv fiir Gesch. derMed., vol. vii, Tafel XIV, Leipzig, 1914.